Welcome to NeoCash NewsCast number 003 bringing you the latest cryptocurrency news from around the world wide web. Please be sure to click the subscribe button and be one of the first to receive cutting-edge news.

NeoCash Radio and the NeoCash Radio logo has been used to perpetuate a scam! There is a google doc, weak sauce, that purports to offer the sale of NCR or NeoCash Radio tokens. This google doc has no affiliation with NeoCash Radio and is a scam. Please do not send ether to this contract address.

There appear to be a bunch of transactions sent to the contract address. I would like to think that anyone who actually listens to the show would know this is a scam from the onset. We would have promoted it in our podcast at least once.

This highlights one potential issue with the current breed of investors/gamblers: they don’t do much research. If a bad actor was going to fleece the crypto newbies, now is a good time for it. Please be ever vigilant and research what you are sending crypto to. Also be sure to check out the destination address on etherscan or another prominent block explorer.

Furthermore, this token sale didn’t have a white paper, explain what the tokens will do, or even bother listing a single value proposition. It seems all it takes is some hashtags to garner a few thousand dollars in donations.

This past week news stories circulated that the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the People’s Bank of China were going to issue a joint statement regarding a crack down on “all virtual currency services and activities of both individuals and business including market makers, mining operators, trading platforms and wallets”. The email came from the PBoC email servers but was a hoax perpetrated by hackers. The news had a negative effect on the crypto markets driving bitcoin prices downward. This is likely the intention of the hacker.

The email came from @pbc.gov.cn and media inquiries to the address were answered with the hacker even going so far as to send a media registration form for the joint statement event. This is quite sophisticated.

RaiBlocks, a block-lattice coin, has rebranded as Nano recently. As a new coin there are not many exchanges to trade it on. BitGrail is one exchange that opened up XRB pairings. Those pairings grew to as much as 85% of the platform’s total trading volume. At the end of January BitGrail announced they would be changing policies and denying service to anyone outside the European Union. They would also be implementing more thorough Know-Your-Customer requirements.

This sent a shockwave through the community and realized a 20% loss in value of the coin. Now news has come out that BitGrail has lost 17 Million XRB and is insolvent. From their website: “internal checks revealed unauthorized transactions which led to a 17 million Nano shortfall”. The issue has been submitted to the local police and is under investigation.

Once again, please do not leave your coins on an exchange. Store you crypto in a private wallet whose keys you control. You’re already gambling that the price will go up, why also gamble that the exchange has good security practices and no bad actors internally?